Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday November 10, 2010 @08:22AM
from the chevron-six-encoded dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has ended a bitter dispute over control of a Mesa video game company's assets, effectively giving the online combat game Stargate Resistance and the long-delayed MMORPG Stargate Worlds back to Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. Fresh Start tried to remove all of Cheyenne Mountain's assets from its offices on Feb. 24, but was prevented from doing so when the police arrived. Networking cords had been cut and left to hang loose, and PC cases were empty shells that had been gutted of components such as hard drives. But time may finally have run out for Worlds, Cheyenne Mountain's signature project: The ruling comes as MGM Studios has apparently terminated the license it granted in 2006 for the Arizona company to produce video games based on the Stargate movies and TV shows."

See, Linux is an OS for grown ups, not a toy like Windows. When grown ups need to do big boy work they use an OS that doesn't get hacked constantly, that is stable, that doesn't have to phone home for permission to operate, that comes out of the box with real tools like NFS and SSH, that doesn't have the worlds worst CLI, that has a secure, stable kernel. But yeah, you just keep on playing with your little toy and pretend it's a big boy OS.

I'd say the secret is that DNF is the training program for employees of Xe (The Mercenary Company Formerly Known as Blackwater), focused as it is on wantonly brutalizing everything, engaging in wildly promiscuous and only theoretically consensual sexual conduct, using steroids to better smash opponents and generally being an epic-level asshole to everyone... but that would be much too obvious for a "secret".

Sci-Fi is worthy of historical landmarks or monuments. Too bad that Arizona gaming company couldn't do a big promotion, like putting a full-sized Stargate by the end of the London Bridge. Of course the remote wilderness of Lake Powell to the north feels ideal, as much like another planet as any place on Earth. A Stargate would look great out by Rainbow Bridge, an amazing natural arch.

Not sure what Fresh Start Software's motive was, but if it was to block development of a Stargate videogame, they achieved their goal.

If one of the quotes from TFA is to be believed then my hypothesis would be that they are offended by Stargate's treatment of religion:

Whiting then expressed optimism that Dark Comet would end up returning Cheyenne Mountain’s assets to him. He compared his situation in the “hostile takeover” to that of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in the first Iron

If one of the quotes from TFA is to be believed then my hypothesis would be that they are offended by Stargate's treatment of religion:

Whiting then expressed optimism that Dark Comet would end up returning Cheyenne Mountain’s assets to him. He compared his situation in the “hostile takeover” to that of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie, but said the motives for it were personal and even religious.

In this field, that could be anything from which operating system they were using to which version of a storyline is canonical.

No. There were allegations about Mr. Whiting that were made when things were getting rancorous. He's probably referring to those. Even if they were true, the people working for Cheyenne and who went on to form Fresh Start had much better reasons to leave long ago.

I know one engineer on the project who was a devote Christian and expressed some reservations about Stargate's idea of Ascension, but he acted sanely and left soon after they stopped paying him.

I worked for the company that Cheyenne Mountain originally licensed the engine for Stargate Worlds from. It seems that the farcical idiocy in that company went from the bottom to top, anyone with a shred of intelligence was judged as a threat and hastily fired. Any communication with that company started with us being blamed for their basic inability to design, manage or implement a computer game and any advice they were given was ignored. They eventually switched to Unreal, but unsurprisingly, they screwed that up too and blamed others for that also. In my experience, the founder of such companies is usually responsible for creating such a unproductive culture and that Whiting guy's comments ("I’m the brains behind this company. I’m the creative guy behind this company.") seem to confirm the image I had of a man devoid of any leadership ability or situational awareness. I have worked with arrogant old idiots who are full of "great ideas" and manage to get investment to make a computer game without knowing the slightest thing about the structure of a project or the people needed to complete it. I applaud "Fresh Start" software in its quest to turn that crippled pony into glue, as liquidation is the best thing for it. If you knew anything about the state of the project, you will know exactly why they did it, probably the only way to get their paychecks from the last few months.

I applaud "Fresh Start" software in its quest to turn that crippled pony into glue, as liquidation is the best thing for it. If you knew anything about the state of the project, you will know exactly why they did it, probably the only way to get their paychecks from the last few months.

You can't take someone's property just because they were managing it incompetently.

I was gone by then, but based on what I know of the people who started it, Fresh Start's goal was to continue supporting a game they believed in. While still at Cheyenne, they completed and released Resistance quickly under terrible circumstances (circumstances that I fled), only to be betrayed by Gary Whiting with a bankruptcy filing the instant they brought the company its first revenue ever. Then they managed to form a company to continue supporting the game. They kept the servers up and even released new maps and improved some of the graphics assets.

This article is 100% Mr. Whiting's side of the story. While at Cheyenne I formed the opinion that he is a very shady individual, but I was pretty low on the totem pole, so I don't know what was really going on.

What I know for sure, however, is that Resistance would never have come out without the people behind Fresh Start, and it probably would have been completely unsupported from the moment of release (possibly unplayable, with the servers down) without the formation of Fresh Start. So I'm going to give them a pretty fucking big benefit of the doubt.

Oh, and based on the financial situation when I left, the people working for Fresh Start were probably getting paid next to nothing, if that much. So obviously "stealing" pays big time.

Actually it was never disclosed but I believe the ring around DS9 was...in fact...A stargate. Sisko just never had Daniel Jackson to identify the last chevron. That and they already had a bad taste in their mouth from the things that came out of that darned wormhole.

DS9 was based on an earlier script for Babylon 5. You can google the lawsuits but let's put it this way, Paramount lost the lawsuit so badly they had it sealed and were forced to show B5 trailers at Star Trek conventions. If you have any idea how anti anything not paramount those guys are, you know they got pounded flat by the judge.

(The version of B5 they had their hands on even had a shapeshifting security officer... )

I'm a huge B5 fan and was solidly against DS9 for their blatant plagiarism back in the day, but I'm going to have to ask for serious citation about the lawsuit Paramount supposedly lost and had sealed (!?) and showing B5 trailers at Trek conventions.

My memory is fuzzy after a decade so I've tried googling for this, but the closest I got was J. Michael Straczynski (B5's creator) quoted as declining to have Paramount sued, as it would draw too much attention and resources away from producing B5.

Star Trek was awesome in its day. Some will say that it still is. But what it had was not just a vision of the future, but a hope for the future. Star Wars gave us a new way look at things as well, but I can't say that it offered much more than intense entertainment. Stargate sought to engage the mind by tying old mysteries with new ones creating a galaxy and even a universe of awe and wonder that continued to expand beyond limits that were not imagined previously. Very few other sci-fi themes contained the qualities contained within Star Trek, Star Wars, Battle Star Galactica, Firefly and others, but Stargate, while it did seem to run its course, maintained those qualities in intense amounts. Had greed, politics and myopia had not taken its destructive toll, the potential of Stargate could have set a new standard for the genre.

I mourn the loss... but it was lost long ago. We're just seeing the aftermath of some really crappy people.

FWIW B5 was the first science fiction show to have any kind of scientific realism when it comes to space battles, not to mention the fact that not all races had artifical gravity, hence the rotating station/ships. As for the story, B5 is about the only TV show to date, no matter what genre, with a well defined plot beforehand. The beginning, middle and end were all written before a single episode was filmed - due to issues with networks though, the fourth season feels very

Compare this to the re-imagined BSG, where the Cylons might have had a plan, but it became very evident they weren't letting the writers in on it. After what was the lamest and literally the most deux ex machina ending ever that was the final episode I didn't think I could ever be as infuriated after watching a show (well, Lost proved me wrong, but I digress).

What? That makes no sense at all, unless you're speaking literally, "the god from the machine". But you said that. However...

There was constant forward-reference to the eventual ending, starting with the very first episode of the miniseries. It becomes apparent when you watch the first episode a second time. There was nothing abrupt about any of it (though the 'selection' of the 'final 5' was seemingly not entirely planned out). "What will happen has happened before" with constant references to God ("the Cy

I won't contest your assertions about the BSG finale because, frankly, I'm on the fence about it myself. However...

(G'kar and Londo make totally up for it though in my opinion)

Egads. They were the least believable characters! What's next: a gurgling puddle of slime in the staring role?

Excuse me, but what!? I'll admit G'Kar became a little too comical in season 5, but watch season 2's "The Long Twilight Struggle", in particular the council chamber scene where G'Kar is forced to give up his seat after his race surrenders to the Centauri. His proud, defiant exit speech utterly robs Londo of any sense of victory, and you see it in Londo's face.

Well, opinions stay opinions.Don't get me wrong, I am a very open person, but reading BSG next to the other (really great) shows made me shiver.

You are right, some actors were very bad in B5 - but some were genius (Katsulas, e.g.).Well this mostly also has to do with budget.

Also, the storyarcs of B5 are still one of the best writings (in terms of WRITING) for any space opera, creating a very epic feeling until the show unfolds into season 5. Many things could have been done better, but we can tell that about every sci-fi show. I do not talk about Crusader or most of the silly movies.

It was an experiment to slightly plan forward 5 Seasons of story and holding that promise, unveiling things which were planted seasons before. Some things of course did not work without some patchwork, like the unexpected change of captains and their meaning being "the one" in season 2/3.You do not have this in DS9 until S3. (I love both shows)

To the question, which came first: It is very likely that Paramount used Straczynski's ideas to influence or even develop DS9 (since they had his first 22 episodes as writing already in '89), however Straczynski never wanted to sue them. You can read about that on wikipedia.

Scientific ideas about how ships, stations, weapons, governments and societies work were very well made in B5. The choice to focus on 4 races was a good one. Of course, it was heavily LotR influenced storytelling, but it worked out.

BSG on the other hand was sometimes terrible to watch - too much obvious but claiming-to-be-very-philosophical dialogues (the philosophical questions thrown up in a sci-fi-show should be between the lines), too much new age hypertheories, terrible nausea while watching space scenes, and again only a few actors were good - however none were as terrible as some in B5, I must admit.

BSG deserves its credit to be a fine show. But it does not deserve to stand beside Firefly, Star Trek or Star Wars at all. B5 in my opinion does.I would add it to the second bestest, where Stargate Atlantis, Farscape, Earth2 and so on can be found.

BSG was a soap opera -- just with people wearing space costumes. When B5 was over I felt that I had watched the characters grow over the last five years. BSG gave me characters that I couldn't care for.

BSG gave real characters, all of which with their faults and strengths. Most of them (like most people) were unsavory to one degree or another, but

Saul Tye, I disliked for the first several seasons. By the end, he was one of my favorites. Giaius Baltar was an outrageously unsavory character at the beginning, but by the end I could at least understand him, somewhat (even if I didn't "like" him, I could understand him.) The Chief is a 'constant' throughout the show,

As all good science fiction does, current events and the human condition were examined, placing the characters in moral quandaries throughout the show.

No, all good science fiction does not examine current events, the human condition, or moral quandaries. In fact I'd be thankful if less scifi writers felt the need to do so, especially since most of them aren't very good at it and even those who are tend to let the requirements of such examinations dictate the plot and the setting.

It is justified because BSG was the the Maryilyn Manson of SciFi shows. It was a laundry list of "What's Edgy" that just comes out as posing. It's pretty clear that the way BSG was designed was by sitting down making a list of what sells to the masses. Heck, they stole a character directly out of Startrek Voyager. I'm sure you will say that they were nothing alike, after all, one was 7 and the other was 8. Totally different numbers! The entire show was one big cheesefest. Yes, they had a better budget than BSG, but it is clear that they threw money at the problem rather than skilled writers. The story was rambling, and didn't even maintain consistency of it's story through the first season. I wanted to like the show. I really did. Unfortunately, it just sucked. Actually to be fair, if they didn't call it BSG, I might have given them more leeway. Instead, they set a bar that they couldn't reach. Maybe they should have called it Galactica 1980 [hulu.com] instead. It would have been closer.

As all good science fiction does, current events and the human condition were examined, placing the characters in moral quandaries throughout the show. Religion, origins, etc. were explored while maintaining a reasonable level of scientific realism. Significantly, B5 had none of these things.

I don't know how you came to that conclusion. The only 'scientific realism' that I saw in BSG was the lack of sound in space. Since that has been a harping point amongst nerds for some time before, it just came off as another of the checklist items of "what's edgy". Contrary to half thought out beliefs, there is sound is space. You can perform an experiment right now to prove it. Say "Test. Test. Test." Go ahead, try it. Was there sound? Yep. Are you in space? Yep. Sound may not travel through a vacuum, but there is definitly sound in space. So, should you hear it in a TV show? That is artistic choice. Certainly if the perspective is from a first person, you should not be able to hear a ship fly by. On the other hand, if you are getting a third person perspective, thus are already recieving information that no character is getting, it makes exactly as much sense that you can hear the ships as you can see them.

On the other hand B5 was constantly making a point to work with science. From explaining why the different races ship blow up in different colors, to acknowledging that not every species breaths the same air, to acknowleding that they could have pests. BSG on the other hand just says "God did it".

Which brings us to religion. There is nothing new in BSG in it's "examination" of religion. It is just rehashing the Christian mythos with nothing new added. How you missed religion in B5 is beyond me. The entire 5 year story arc was riding the religious theme. Perhaps you missed it because it wasn't the same old story you've heard a million times. Maybe it was because it actually examined the religion instead of just saying "God did it". From the beginning to the end, B5 examined religion through the Shadows. Not only examining good and evil from the mortal view, but questioning the good and evil of the gods themselves. Going even farther, questioning whether the ideas of good and evil even apply.

Basically your analysis is that BSG's simplistic trendy addition of those subjects counts, while B5's deeper analysis of the subject going so far as to even question if the questions are even asked right, doesn't count.

The re-imaged BSG was largely unique in the quality it portrayed. The acting was good, the characters were good, and the story was complex and interwoven.

No offence intended towards the quality of BSG, but I think it should be pointed out that making a quality ongoing television series starting in 2003 is a lot less impressive than doing the same thing starting in 1993. It's easy to forget just how enormously standards have risen in the last couple of decades - personally, I start measuring that rise with "

BSG has a number. They're not perfect, but it's a far cry better than anything else out there that's worth watching.

For instance, the Raptor ships have lateral burn thrusters for turning/maneuvering. (You can see this throughout the show if you're paying attention.) There are a couple 'ring ships' in the fleet. Weapons are mass drivers (guns), not stupid "energy pulse weapons". "Faster than light" space travel is plausible per the laws of physics. There are very real 'space' requirements, like air, material

I didn't watch BSG, Firefly, Dollhouse, and hell, even Stargate, until they were almost done showing/were done showing (BSG - started watching S1 when S6 was showing; SG1, started @ season 1 when S9 or so was on TV). Why? Because I'd avoided them, thinking they were in the same class of shlock as B5 and Andromeda: horrible acting, worse props and races, and abhorent writing which focused on things which we

Yes, Star Trek brought to us a vision of the future wherein no matter where one roams in the universe, 1) Everybody looks human, 2) Everybody speaks perfect English, despite never having been contacted before by humans, and 3) Sex with alien species is considered perfectly natural. All I can say is... Ewwwwwwwww!

Yes, Star Trek brought to us a vision of the future wherein no matter where one roams in the universe, 1) Everybody looks human, 2) Everybody speaks perfect English, despite never having been contacted before by humans, and 3) Sex with alien species is considered perfectly natural. All I can say is... Ewwwwwwwww!

Oh come on.

To be fair, Star Wars, BattleStar Galactica, Firefly, Babylon 5, Dr. Who, Space: 1999, and a host of other shows all featured those characteristics.

It's not because the shows' makers were unimaginative, it's because they are television shows.

It's difficult to find actors who don't look like humans; audiences in the countries where these shows were produced mainly understand only English (there are no native Klingon speakers, no matter how many nerds learn the Klingon language); and sex keeps stupid people watching the show, helping the ratings. Ok, Dr. Who hasn't featured much, if any, sex, but that's because it was a BBC production aimed at families.

While I agree that sex isn't limited to intercourse, I disagree that anything 'sexual' is sex. One could argue that a character saying "you're looking GOOD in that dress" is a sexual come-on. But to then say there was sex in that show.. to me, that's absurd.

There have been several companions that aren't even vaguely sexy (unless you've got strange tastes), and until the new series, the Doctor hadn't even kissed anyone. Probably the sexiest companion was Leela of the Sevateem. You could describe her as a very bright but primitive jungle jane in animal skin outfit with miniskirt. (Ok, not a really good description of her costume, but it's close enough.) It didn't even have bared midriff. By today's standards, it's rather freaking tame.Sex was something the old

I should also point out that Doctor Who doesn't fall under "everyone speaks English" - actually everyone/everything speaks their own language and the Doctor and his companions are able to comprehend them due to an aspect of the TARDIS [wikia.com]. Admittedly that's a huge deus ex machina to get around the issue, but at least they made the effort to explain it. I'd also say that, since it's return in 2005, it no longer falls foul of "Everyone looks human", although admittedly a fair few of the alien races are still huma

The original Star Trek crew was constantly encountering previously unknown species and immediately being able to communicate with them -- even when all the crew members devices were confiscated. I only recall one episode of ST:TNG wherein they encountered refugees that, despite looking perfectly human, the universal translator actually took a while to learn their language before they could communicate. Yes, these lapses in logic were plot devices intended to help the story move forward.

Yes, Star Trek brought to us a vision of the future wherein no matter where one roams in the universe, 1) Everybody looks human, 2) Everybody speaks perfect English, despite never having been contacted before by humans, and 3) Sex with alien species is considered perfectly natural. All I can say is... Ewwwwwwwww!

And Stargate (SG1 anyway) was different how?

Trek:

1)They sort of handwaved this with The Chase, but in most cases it was just hat/nose of the week.

Personally, the series that tried the "hardest" on aliens being alien was Farscape.

Farscape:

1) Bi-pedal humanoid seemed common, but a) the makeup for those bipedal humanoids sometimes got rather intense. b) they weren't always humanoid (Pilot for instance) and c) motivations weren't always similar (just 'cause it looked mostly "human" didn't mean it was, and vice-versa). (well, and d) explaining why the most human aliens DID look that way, and that was part of the plot... but we had to wait for the movie to fill in the last season of story).

2) They explained it away in Episode 1 (think Babel-Fish), and even came back to the idea a few times (with 'us' the audience seeing how things sounded "naturally").

Sex is one thing, procreation is another. Star trek had Human-Vulcan and Human-Klingon half-breeds. Even with a common origin, how many generations should it take before 2 isolated populations can no longer sucessfully interbreed?

1) Explained in TNG that a single humanoid race had "seeded" the galaxy with its likeness IIRC.2) Universal translator, duh. Have you even seen the shows?3) Isn't that just racism (speciesism?) on your part? Since, as you have already observed, the aliens are almost all physiologically similar to humans.

You wonder why the aliens looked human and spoke English?Come on, think of the process:You go to the casting call, read for the part.....How many ugly non English speakers would make it past that?As for the sex, well, some aliens will do anything to get on stage.

Stargate blew. All of its plots refer to ancient structures and cultures, saying "aliens did it". When one gets old and tired, they get out a new culture, and label it with "aliens did it," and move on, as if they've done something clever. And the things they refer to? They aren't "mysteries." We know who built the pyramids, and why, and when, and largely how.

What it was was bland, generic scifi fit for mass consumption. It lacked the campy retro appeal of the original run of Star Trek, lacked the talented

Long story short, Stargate SG1 held longer than any singlø run of Star Trek. They eventually succumbed to their own inflation of the stakes, nothing external. After defeating "gods" there is very little left to achieve....

Had greed, politics and myopia had not taken its destructive toll, the potential of Stargate could have set a new standard for the genre.

I can't speak to the "greed and greed", but Stargate did set a "new standard" for the genre, to some degree. The show ran for a decade with (mostly) the same cast throughout. They were able to sustain essentially the same format for that entire time, without degrading the quality too substantially, and introduce new content throughout.

Granted, this only really works with episodic fiction, but they still managed to maintain a degree of continuity and character progression from season to season (and episode t

What I liked a lot about Stargate SG-1 (and really the whole franchise) is that it showed Earth growing from the pre-spaceflight era into a major power. Along the way, we even learned to cooperate among ourselves. The Stargate program became an international effort. It was a like a Roddenberry hope for the future... but with more action.:)

In the very first episode, the Stargate is a forgotten relic under a tarp in a military facility... by the last episode Earth forces are fighting off alien demigods in sh

They won a court decision and got something from someone else. Is there a limit on the number of characters in their keyboard? Is it too much trouble to even research the story to find out what is going on? It is like watching the last 5 minutes of "Iron Man" and going WTF? Who is the good guy, Stark because he won, or because he blows up stuff?

This is why I hate to read the article, I am hoping some/. poster is going to do the work of posting the back history. The thing the "journalist" did not do.

Have you read the linked articles? The whole affair is a clusterfuck of people, companies, real and intellectual property, law suits and whatnot. I dare you to make any sense of it!

When I read the summary, I was like "Oh nice, a Stargate MMO, let's find out more about it and the story!". After having RTFA and another it linked to, I was like "WTF, I need a dozen organigrams and flowcharts just to keep up with what's going on! I don't even care anymore!"

Clusterfuck is a very good term for it. I knew some people who worked there and it was just insane. Towards the end employees went months without getting paid, some left for greener pastures which was complicated by the economic meltdown occurring at the time. Others kept grinding away on a project they had already put so many hours into, supported by savings or spouses employed elsewhere.

Wow, yeah. Don't bother trying to hit the related stories links form the main article either. They're just as poorly written. I can't tell who did what,when. As I now ( probably incorrectly ) understand, there was a company Cheyenne mountain that was developing a video game, they may have gone bankrupt. Other companies emerged from the dust out of former employees and inverters ( dark comet), Having access to Cheyenne studios, they just took stuff and the project itself for a small amount of money, with o

From reading the linked articles it seems like Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was in Chap 11. Then someone (maybe a group of investors?) illegally sold the assets of the company to the new gaming companies for $100,000. It appears the court said that action was illegal both in terms of procedure and perhaps value as well. The motives are where the real dirt is, and I suspect you're not going to get a straight answer on that until after all the lawsuits are settled.

It's even stranger, in that Gary Whiting, had ANOTHER company, Garvick Properties, LLC that went bankrupt. Due to Whiting's shenanigans, "Cheyenne Mountain Games, Inc" (a subsidiary of "Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, Inc") got dragged into the bankruptcy. As near as I can tell, that caused the subsidiary to go bankrupt too.

Meanwhile, Tim Jensen, one time president of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment got caught by the SEC trying to move assets between two OTHER companies he owned/controlled. He's the on

I was in the early alpha and beta testing of Worlds, as I had a friend at Cheyenne Mountain. It was the first MMO I actually liked. It was a little buggy, but the game was almost done when bankruptcy hit. This was complicated by some freeze being put on the accounts where, even though the money was there, they were not able to pay their employees. Shoot, the game was in Beta, there were just a few bugs to work out, the server farms were going online - the game was pretty much READY - and the inside word was that they were weeks (about two months) from going live. Quite sad what became of it.

Employee wages are a priority claim in a bankruptcy, second only to Secured claims. IANAL, but they could well have been cooking their books somewhat. Had I been an employee with them, I would have taken a sharp eye to the bankruptcy court. As a creditor, you'd have that right.

OTOH, "two months from going live" might have been the same sort of readiness that Stargate: Resistance had, when it was shoved out the door bare weeks before bankruptcy was declared. IE "two months and holding".

Seriously though a free MMO where Gates lead to new persistent server worlds - where user content servers are allowed - and could even contain parallel universes or lead back/forward in time - THAT is the future WoW Killer!

(and hardcore role-players could opt-in to allowing characters to permanently die - and worlds permanently change - based on real player actions)

The cut network cords were simply where the server racks were removed. They weren't actually cut, just pulled out of punch down blocks. The reason for the apparent gutting was because the landlord was going to lock the company out of the building, so Dark Comet was trying to save as many assets before that happened. There wasn't enough space for all the computers, so the hard drives were taken to prevent the data from being misused by whomever the landlord brought in to sell off the equipment. Everythin